Lord of the Wolfyn - By Jessica Andersen Page 0,54

out of here. Because if she stayed any longer, she might never escape his spell.

But how could she leave? She was surrounded, disarmed, her bow and arrows tossed aside. Mind racing, she scanned the scene. She caught a blur of motion from the trees near the waterfall, another from a stand of middle growth nearby, but then nothing, making her think it had been a bird.

Her captors were all in their wolfish forms now, glued to the fight as Dayn rose over Kenar and slammed down atop him, driving the alpha to the ground. Teeth flashed, blood sprayed and Kenar screeched in pain. When he next stood, he was panting and dragging a foreleg. Dayn, too, was injured; he was bleeding from a deep gash on his shoulder, and the blood spattering the ground beneath him said that there were other wounds hidden by his dark fur. But he lunged first, drove Kenar back and followed him down with a flash of bloodstained teeth.

The brutal, meaty crunch that followed was the most sickening thing Reda had ever heard, and she gagged as Kenar spasmed and went gruesomely limp.

And then that slurp-crunch instantly dropped to the second most sickening thing she had ever heard as Dayn topped it by planting his front paws on Kenar’s body, lifting his blood-streaked black muzzle to the sky and loosing a terrifying and self-satisfied howl of victory.

Awwwoooooo. The noise reached inside her, making her want to scream and claw at her own skin. Or maybe that was the knowledge that she had lain with a creature, a killer. Her heart tore as she stared at him, his wolf form gorgeous, terrifying…and entirely enthralling.

He howled again and nausea flared suddenly, and she clapped a hand over her mouth and turned away. Two of her huge wolfyn guards flanked her as she ran blindly from the circle with no real destination in mind except away. She needed to get away from the sight of his gorgeous emerald eyes, away from the wild, feral glory in his howl, away from the burning desire to turn back.

The guards herded her toward the trailhead, near where her bow and arrows had been tossed. One nudged her toward the weapons. The other turned back to the pack, silver-white fur bristling as if he were protecting her rather than holding her captive.

Wait. Silver?

Reda looked down at the wolfyn nearest her, thought she saw something familiar in its eyes. “Keely?”

The creature nodded, then nudged her forcibly toward the weapons, the pathway. She whuffed an almost-word that sounded like, “Go.”

And then there was a sudden howl of alarm, a scramble of feet, and Reda looked up to see the pack reorienting on her, Keely and the silver-backed male.

Reda exploded into motion. She grabbed her bow and arrows and bolted for the trail. Behind her, a feral snarl sounded the attack as the Scratch-Eye pack came after her, and Keely and her loner friend tried to fend them off, and only partially succeeded. They stalled some of the wolfyn, but others came on.

Reda ran for her life. Her legs and lungs hurt; the wolfsbene helped, but would it be enough? Please, God. Gods. Whoever you are, she thought brokenly as she hit the trail and started up with a half dozen beasts behind her and gaining.

“Hold!” The word cracked commandingly, halting the wolfyn in their tracks.

She couldn’t help herself. Recognizing Dayn’s voice, she stopped halfway up and looked back. Her heart shuddered at the sight of him standing over Kenar’s body, both of them now morphed back to their human forms, one alive, one dead.

Dayn was wearing the same clothing he had been in when he morphed—how did that work?—and for a nanosecond he looked like the panel in her book that showed the woodsman standing over the slain wolf, triumphant at having saved the girl.

It was the truth, yet not.

Their eyes met, and even across the distance the contact struck sparks inside her. “Oh, Dayn,” she whispered, heart hurting.

“For gods’ sake go, Reda. Get out of here.” He didn’t shout the words, but she heard them clearly in her head, in her heart. And she just as clearly saw the pack orienting on him, bristling as the excitement of the fight cleared and they remembered that he was both their sworn enemy and now their leader.

This was about to get ugly, Reda thought. But even as her body—traitor as it was—sent her two steps back down the trail, a full-throated roar of sound and